WORKING TOGETHER
Harnessing Community Resources
to Improve Middle Schools


THREE COMMUNITY COALITIONS

Long Beach, California: Middle School Reform Initiative

Education reform builds local economic strength


In Long Beach, California, middle school reform has a defined place within the city's long-term educational goals, which in turn fit within the city's larger strategy of economic revitalization. Coordinating that strategy--and the network of people and institutions contributing to it--is the task of the Long Beach Community Partnership.

The Partnership was created in 1995 after economic setbacks forced the city to take a hard look at its own future. Charged with developing innovative, inclusive partnerships across all sectors of the community, the Partnership works in three broad areas: economic development, education, and quality of life. Within education, the Partnership hopes to foster a unified, coherent approach to education, one that allows students to follow a clear course toward higher education and employment and make successful transitions along the way from grade to grade and from level to level.

Ensuring that middle schools are a strong link in the chain is the goal of the Partnership's Middle School Reform Initiative, whose members include people from across the city and its educational system. Through them, the initiative draws on the resources of the Long Beach Unified School District, Long Beach Community College, and California State University, Long Beach, to support an ambitious program of school improvement. For example, because many local teachers are trained at Cal State's school of education, the initiative is assisting the university in establishing a middle school teaching credential--thus simultaneously helping to define good middle school teaching methods for local teachers and ensuring a continuing supply of trained educators.

When the initiative organized an institute for incoming middle school parents, it recruited speakers on adolescent development, college preparation, and other topics from the faculty of Long Beach Community College and Cal State. Faculty specialists at the college and university have also helped develop curricula for new, more rigorous middle school courses in history, mathematics, science, and language arts.

Judy Seal, the Partnership's vice president of education, sees an important role for the initiative in demonstrating to middle school students something that the school system alone cannot guarantee: "that staying in school really matters, that there will be a place for them in tomorrow's economy." She is hopeful that the recent adoption of mandatory school uniforms--a policy that the initiative endorsed--is sending an important message in return: that dress, behavior, and academic achievement are the intertwined goals of school reform. Kristi Kahl, an initiative member who also coordinates middle school reform for the school district, puts it this way: "Uniforms are showing this community that we are very, very serious about education."

If the message of school uniforms is clear, however, the overall message of middle school reform is not always so readily apparent. Long Beach is a leader in the national movement for standards-based reform, but the schools have had a difficult time conveying their goals to the community as a whole. "We tried middle school reform verbiage with outsiders," recalls Judy Seal, "but they couldn't respond." As a result, the Middle School Reform Initiative has supported the work of the district by going to groups of citizens, business people, parents, and others to explain how reform in general and standards in particular can help individual students achieve at the highest levels.

"I make it very personal," says Seal. "My own kids have had problems, and their schools have helped them. When I talk about those things, it makes it easier for other people to hear me." She also thinks the Partnership can help encourage educators as they face the hard job of school reform. "Be positive," she says, "and assume you're preaching to the choir. You need to tell people they're on the right path. Point to the good things."

To reach middle school students directly, the initiative helped design and seek foundation support for the Youth Development and Resource Center, based at Stanford Middle School and funded by the Knight Foundation, the California Community Foundation, and Kraft Foods. The center runs academic and recreation programs, field trips, and community involvement activities for more than 1,100 students. Its advisory committee includes many prominent business and community leaders, who have attended events at the school and helped shape its programs. Besides serving students, the center has developed concrete and direct ways to reach out to members of the community and involve them in projects to improve the middle schools.

Seal explains that the center's organizers plan activities for the entire year, then go to businesses and institutions and ask for exactly the support they need. "Spell it out," she says, "and people will help." A job shadowing program with Sears has grown out of this approach, as has a project to supplement the center's staff with education students from Long Beach Community College and Cal State. In the next few years, the initiative aims to expand the program and replicate its components at other local middle schools.

Judy Seal advocates a direct approach and, even in a big city, a small town feeling. She is quick to point out to Long Beach employers that today's middle school students will eventually become their workers, and that a good education system is essential to attracting working families. With the press, she recommends taking the time to understand their perspective and establish a dialogue. "Watch for accuracy," she says, "and when they get it wrong, call them up and tell them."

Middle school reform has a broad agenda, and it can take people time to understand both the scope of the issues and the need for discrete and tangible action. In advocating for change, patience is essential. "Movement is slow," says Kristi Kahl. "We meet once a month. People are busy, so a lot of our members can't even come every month. But as we got to know each other, the connections began to form."

Connections are also forming with other Partnership educational projects, especially efforts to integrate school technology systems, establish a "seamless" interface across different levels of education, and improve school-to-work opportunities for all students. Capitalizing on those connections and tying them together for the educational and economic future of Long Beach is the Partnership's task over the next
few years.


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from WORKING TOGETHER: Harnessing Community Resources to Improve Middle Schools. By Anne Mackinnon. Published in 1997 by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.